Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP) [LWN.net]

Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP)

Posted Apr 24, 2008 21:14 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643)
In reply to: Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP) by shapr
Parent article: Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP)

Although I haven't met OLPC people myself, this is the same impression I've got.  I'm really
astonished by the amount of negativity coming out - as soon as the project starts running into
trouble, people seem to jump on the bandwagon to knock it.  I wonder how much of this bad
press is due to companies such as Intel and Microsoft who are threatened by the OLPC...

Part of this is because OLPC set such astonishingly high goals that it was almost bound to
fail - but even if it misses some goals it has done amazing things to the design of laptops
(very low power wireless mesh networks, dual-mode screens that work in intense sunlight and
also at very low power, etc), and even created a new ultra low end laptop market segment (with
the eee PC as the first commercially available example).

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Low-cost laptop program sees a key leadership defection (AP)

Posted Apr 25, 2008 1:09 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

It's probably because most people, myself included, don't care if OLPC does truly amazing
things.  We (allow myself to speak for everybody ;) only care that the XO works well.

Frankly, I think most of this bad press has been due to Negroponte himself.  The guy changes
his position every 3 months and explains himself only in vaguest non-statements (the most
recent ones about fundamentalist open source guys were particularly awesome).  His position on
just about everything practical is unclear.  Except on selling the XO in the first world, the
only market that's shown solid, organic success: he's against that!

OLPC needs to hire a good PR team to clean up NN's message and the company's positioning.  The
press coverage has just been getting worse and worse and I really don't think it's due to some
sort of Asus/Intel consipiracy.